Gypsies Like The Wind

The bracing air eddied
past the sliding glass door
left ajar at the corner of the room,
as I scrambled to retrieve

the swirling pages and clips and nicknacks
upset by the sudden flurry, thinking
a visitor may be calling, or more likely,
the gypsy wind looking for respite.

I eased my way through the opened door
out onto the porch, and as I imagined,
no night callers there, nor
any reason for concern, when I heard

a peculiar stirring in the wind.
Not cries or voices familiar or unknown, but
faint rumblings, quaint and curious, with power
not unlike a magnet, drawing

me closer and deeper into the night.
Giving in to the charm, I
dawdled along, the sounds as my guide,
stronger and louder, until

a few blocks hence came the park,
the one I often haunted
on winter evenings like these,
where on the teardrop-shaped pond,

fringed with hunched cypresses
bent over from years of devoted shading
the waterlilies and grasses and reeds,
and residence to a chorus of riant frogs-

each one in its own way was my repose.
And grandest with full moon and starry sky,
as glancing moonbeams shown
the waterlilies sleepy faced-

hallf-opened, half-shut, tuckered out
from a full day's pose, giving their all
waiting up for the gala- and,
the cypresses, their shadows whiffling

across a silvery-glazed pond, conducting
a jocund choir of amphibians.
Though hearing them go on for hours, I
never once laid eyes on them, too shy

or scared to show themselves, hiding
somewhere deep in the reeds, blending
with the floating pads, unsure
of address or stay- as tomorrow,

when construction crews break ground
on a four-laned highway straight through
this amphitheater that's now called
home.

And where will they go-
the lilies and reeds and merry music-makers-
when this moon-illumined slough's no more?
Many years it took the cypress trees

to shape their bending love. I'd forgotten
tomorrow was the day. I
wanted to- wanted to forget
even the joys of this night,

the impermanance of this world-
that we are gypsies just like the wind
with home somewhere else not yet found,
lest we ever regret its ending.
~~

Copyright 2010 Francis Don Daniels.
All Rights Reserved.